#85: Alan Fiske on Why It's Hard to Understand Humans

This is Cognitive Revolution, my show about the personal side of the intellectual journey. Each week, I interview an eminent scientist, writer, or academic about the experiences that shaped their ideas. The show is available wherever you listen to podcasts.

This week’s guest is Alan Fiske. Alan is a professor of anthropology at UCLA, who is known for his unique brand of mixing approaches from psychology and anthropology. He is the brother of Susan Fiske, a famous social psychologist and one of my first guests on this show. In this episode, we talk about growing up in an academic family, Alan joining the peace core to avoid the Vietnam draft, helping to eradicate smallpox in Congo, how travel and experiences abroad influenced decision to become an anthropologist, the tension between doing good in the work (embodied by his moither) and working with ideas (his father’s purview), how indentifying the commonalities Weber, Piaget, & Ricouer led to the development of Alan’s most influential theory, and the relationship between the fields of psychology and anthropology throughout Alan’s career.

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